My role was essentially a general physician in the hospital and I was Director of the undergraduate paediatric teaching program. So I worked out the programs. John Court was the first to do it and I followed John. It seemed to work reasonably well.

Arthur Clark: I did that job from 1960 to 1965 with Vernon, but I didn't have the title.

Ann Westmore: What role was the University Department of Paediatrics taking in paediatric training, not only for the future paediatricians of Victoria and Australia but for medical practitioners more generally.

Peter Phelan: Howard Williams was appointed Director of Postgraduate Studies and he was succeeded in 1975 by 'Bunny' [Bernard Neal], and those two really ran the training program for paediatricians and the continuing education for General Practitioners came under the same program. Howard had an office with David [Danks], reflecting their close personal relationship. And, I think, Howard had a part-time appointment with David in the University Department of Paediatrics when David took over [as Stevenson Professor] which allowed him to continue his research in Brunswick.[89] His major interest was in postgraduate studies and he retired in 1975 when 'Bunny’ took over.

I don't think you had any attachment to the University Department of Paediatrics, did you 'Bunny’? So the postgraduate program was really running quite independently.

Bernard Neal: It was a time when the marriage referred to earlier was starting to show some cracks at the seams and it was time for reform. I think I was the last occupant of that position before it reverted to a different administrative system.

It was uncomfortable during my term of office because it seemed anomalous that there was a Department of Paediatrics that was supposed in the eyes of the Hospital to confine itself to undergraduate teaching. There was no ill-will on any side but it was a marriage of incompatibles that was not going to last.

Frank Oberklaid: In those days, in the late 1960s and 1970s, the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne was the Australian paediatric hospital to be trained in. So if you wanted to be an academic, you had to spend some time at the Hospital.

Bernard Neal: There was a steady stream of visiting people from around the world. I happened to be involved with the International Paediatric Association and I, and others, would look after people who came from Africa and China and many other parts of the world, and running courses for General Practitioners and so on. But looking back, it was pretty miniscule really, and it was an area that needed a lot of development.

Peter Phelan: In the early to mid-1980s, at any one time, the Children's Hospital had anything between sixty and eighty overseas trained paediatricians working at the Hospital. It was a time when the Victorian Medical Postgraduate Foundation was responsible for visa organisation and it collected data. The next largest number of oversees trainees at any hospital in Australia was at the Royal Prince Alfred in Sydney with thirty. So the Children’s was way ahead of any other hospital in attracting overseas paediatricians to come here and train.

Kester Brown: It [the intake of overseas-trained specialists] was all across the Hospital and the last figures I saw on this was that 50% of overseas people who came for postgraduate medical training to Australia came to Victoria, and 50% of those came to the Children's Hospital. That’s 25% overall.

Max Robinson: It should also be mentioned that undergraduates from overseas came to work with us.

Kester Brown: It was not only in paediatrics that people sought training, but in anaesthesia, surgery and so on.

Ann Westmore: So the University Department was not involved very much in this [postgraduate] training. It was the rest of the Hospital as well?

John Rogers: I came back to the Department in 1976, primarily as a medical geneticist. The only appointment that was funded at the time was a Senior Lecturer in the [University] Department of Paediatrics. Teaching paediatrics to undergraduates was regarded as part of my workload.

I think it is fair to say that at that time the clinical commitment of David [Danks] was all within genetics and metabolic disease. That was his area of focus and of his research. He handed over, or delegated, all of the rest of the work to other people.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine